Missing ‘Show behind transparent areas’ option in Drop shadow effect

Hey there ​@LARYSA — welcome to Figma Forum, and thanks for bringing this up!

Just to clarify: At this time, the Inner shadow does not support Show behind transparent areas, but the Drop shadow option does. Does that help get you where you need to be?

If you specifically need this to work with inner shadows, could you share a bit more about how you’re using it and how not having this option impacts your workflow? I’d like to surface more of your experience with the product team — thanks for your help with this information.

We’re always evaluating improvements based on designer feedback, and we’ll continue updating this article as things evolve: Apply effects to layers → Show drop shadows through transparent layers.

Hi!

I didn’t say about Inner shadow, just about Drop shadow. Not just me have this problem.

Look at screen

I’m having this issue as well.

It does difficult things a lot 😕

andrea-hg wrote:

I’m having this issue as well.

It does difficult things a lot 😕

 

 

It seems that your frame doesn’t have transparent areas, so it doesn’t have the Show behind transparent areas option either

I am also having this issue when I first enable Drop Shadow effect on an object with transparency, but noticed that the Show behind transparent areas option will appear only after I DESELECT the object, select it again, and then reopen the Drop Shadow window. This only started happening relatively recently, it used to just be available right away.

Thanks for sharing that GIF, ​@Nellya — it’s super helpful in showing how to enable this effect.

​@andrea-hg, ​@LARYSA, and ​@TMS — I wanted to check in: Did Nellya’s reply help clear things up? Also, so I can share clear insights with our product team, is the main challenge that this change adds extra steps to your workflow, or that it’s blocking you from achieving the outcome you need? Thanks again for sharing your experience.

In my case, I’m working with straight PNG’s copied from the web or Photoshop, so transparency does exist in these objects and that option does not appear until I deselect and reselect the object.

It’s not blocking me from any outcome, it’s just kind of an annoying extra step that didn’t exist before. As of a few weeks ago I could turn on Drop Shadow on these images and the transparency option would appear right away.

Thank you so much for sharing that GIF, ​@TMS — it really helps illustrate where the process could feel a bit more involved over time. I’ve passed along your feedback to our product team, and we’ll keep you posted with any updates or smoother workflow suggestions that come out of the discussions. Appreciate your patience as we continue iterating based on your experience.

Hi all! Tom has gone on a well-deserved break, so I wanted to drop an update:

The engineering team located the issue and has a fix set to deploy on Friday. Not sure the exact time, but if I hear* news that it’s been pushed, I’ll stop in again to let you know 🙏🏻

I guess my example was indeed a bad one 😅 I just took a quick screenshot without thinking through. But yes, I had the same issue that TMS demonstrated, except the option does not show even after deselecting and selecting again. 

Glad to hear the issue has been located.

No worries!! As of now, I can confirm this should be resolved. If anyone still notices issues, reply here again 😄

The issue is still present on Figma Web & Figma Desktop App version 125.7.5. The “Show behind transparent areas” option is only visible in Effect Styles and I can’t even get it to work. 

EDIT:

It seems to have been resolved. However the “Show behind transparent areas” option doesn’t seem to be available/work on fully transparent backgrounds. I am trying to apply a ring to a ghost button using drop shadow but I cannot get it to work.

Femi Bright wrote:

ksn wrote:

No worries!! As of now, I can confirm this should be resolved. If anyone still notices issues, reply here again 😄

 

The issue is still present on Figma Web & Figma Desktop App version 125.7.5. The “Show behind transparent areas” option is only visible in Effect Styles and I can’t even get it to work. 

 

oop! checking in with the team who worked on this. ill edit this reply once I get another update.

ksn wrote:

 

Femi Bright wrote:

ksn wrote:

No worries!! As of now, I can confirm this should be resolved. If anyone still notices issues, reply here again 😄

 

The issue is still present on Figma Web & Figma Desktop App version 125.7.5. The “Show behind transparent areas” option is only visible in Effect Styles and I can’t even get it to work. 

 

oop! checking in with the team who worked on this. ill edit this reply once I get another update.

Please check the update on my initial reply. 

Not sure if it was like this, but it seems to be bugging out when the spread is not 0.

All of this is good to know -- I touched base with an engineer working on our core experience who asked if anyone here would be willing to share files that are featured in their recordings/screenshots. If that’s possible, can you reply again here? One of my fellow community support mods will be helping out moving forward.